EAST IS EAST AND WEST IS WEST... DID KIPLING GET IT RIGHT? EAST IS EAST AND WEST IS WEST... DID KIPLING GET IT RIGHT? Over a century ago, long before anyone became aware of the term multicultural, Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem called "The Ballad of East & West" whose initial line reads: "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet." Kipling seemed to be saying that all of us are, to some extent at least, unable to adapt to the ways of others. Joseph Rudyard Kipling ought to have known, he was born in Bombay, India, where his father, John Lockwood Kipling, was a teacher at the local Jeejeebhoy School of Art. Kipling himself was essentially part of both cultures, having been born to expatriates and partly raised and working in a foreign environment before returning to the place of his birth. The British in their colonisation process tended, or at least attempted, to adapt foreign conditions to themselves rather than adapting themselves to foreign conditions. One has only to look around their former colonies to see abundant evidence of this.

The names of places or towns show clearly their origins: New York, New Jersey, New England, Nova Scotia (New Scotland that is), New South Wales, Christchurch, etc. The British always believed in making the mountain come to Mohamed and they almost always got away with it because of their military power. So the question that might be asked is, if Westerners find it hard to make the transition to the East, why would Easterners find it any easier to make the transition to the West? Especially why in the main, they do not seem to do so, although many of them emigrate to western countries? Perhaps the answer to this question lies more in the specific environment from which emigrants come. Immigrants from the Caribbean or West African countries seem to adapt much more easily to western cultures and concepts than do those from eastern lands, although there are some exceptions. People from India, while tending ï¿½ as do most immigrants anywhere ï¿½ to form, live and marry within their own communities, at least in the initial generations, very often integrate into the societies in which they find themselves. Indeed Canada has quite a number of such immigrants, or their offspring, serving as MPs in Ottawa.

This is not quite so true though of many people coming from other countries in the Middle East or from places like Pakistan who happen to be followers of the Islamic faith. Islam, unlike other formal religious faiths, is an integral way of life. The Muslim (ï¿½One who submitsï¿½) can allow no separation between his life and his religion, his politics and his faith. In Canada, now presumably the fourth best country in the world, where freedom of speech at a Quebec radio station is menaced, the ones doing the menacing, our unelected friends at the CRTC (Canadian Radio Television Commission) awarded a licence to al-Jazeera. One wonders if it too will lose its licence if those videos of the beheading of westerners, which al-Jazeera seems pleased to show once in a while, do not have the required Canadian victim content! One of al-Jazeeraï¿½s popular presenters is the controversial Egyptian imam, Dr Al Qaradawi, of whom the UKï¿½s BBC cooed approvingly that he has ï¿½starï¿½ status among the worldï¿½s Muslims.

He is the one at whose feet the obsequious Mayor of London grovelled recently, and is a staunch promoter of human rights such as executing homosexuals, the right of men to beat their wives, and the murder of innocent Jews. During the ensuing uproar it went unnoticed that he also wants to conquer Europe. Those who have difficulty believing all this should listen to his popular TV show Sharia and Life, presumably coming to you soon on al-Jazeera. Again, according to MEMRI which translates the imamï¿½s broadcasts, he prophesied in 1999 that, ï¿½Islam will return to Europe. The conquest need not necessarily be by the sword. Perhaps we will conquer these lands without armies. We want an army of preachers and teachers who will present Islam in all languages and in all dialects.ï¿½ This man is not some bizarre fringe performer but someone whose programmes are extremely popular and are being watched by millions throughout the Middle East and Europe. Another preacher, the Saudi Sheikh Said al Qahtani, said on a recent TV broadcast that ï¿½We did not occupy the US, with eight million Muslims, using bombings.

Had we been patient and let time take its course, instead of the eight million there could have been 80 million [Muslims], and 50 years later perhaps the US would have become Muslim.ï¿½ This appears to be an implied criticism of Al-Qaï¿½eda for waking a slumbering West, and is hard to dismiss as a simple aberration. Indeed, the quite moderate former director of the Islamic Cultural Centre in London, Dr Zaki Badawi, has admitted that, ï¿½Islam endeavours to expand in Britain. Islam is a universal religion. It aims to bring its message to all.ï¿½ ï¿½Recently an item in the press mentioned that Canadian judges could be enforcing Islamic law, or Sharia, soon in disputes between Muslims.

Could this be the precursor of an Islamic penal law which will institute sentences such as the flogging or the stoning of adulterous women?ï¿½ Perhaps Bernard Lewis put it as succinctly as possible in his recent best-selling book The Crisis of Islam when he wrote ï¿½The presumption is that the duty of jihad will continue, interrupted only by truces, until all the world either adopts the Muslim faith or submits to Muslim rule.ï¿½ The Muslim tradition divides the world into two parts, Dar al Islam, where Muslims rule, and Dar al Harb, the ï¿½field of warï¿½ where the infidels live, something we might do well to remember. The West is constantly castigated for having imposed its decadent values, culture and language on Third World countries, but one rarely reads that Islam colonised lands containing advanced and ancient civilizations. How long did it take the Spanish to retrieve their country in the lengthy ï¿½Reconquistaï¿½? Something like 700 years if memory serves. Elsewhere, a central Asian people, the Turks, converted to Islam and conquered the ancient Christian land of Anatolia (now Turkey).

In 1453 they captured Constantinople, then the centre of the Eastern Orthodox Church. They turned the sublime Hagia Sophia, which had been one of the most important churches in Christendom for almost 1,000 years after it was built in 537A.D, into a mosque, adding minarets. For four hundred years the Turks occupied Greece and much of the Balkans, turning the Parthenon into a mosque and besieging Vienna, before retreating as their endurance declined. Talk to a Greek Cypriot or a Greek about Islam and the Turks, but be careful to put some cotton wool in your ears first! The imam of the mosque of the Saudi governmentï¿½s King Fahd Defence Academy, Sheikh Muhammad bin Abd al Rahman al ï¿½Arifi, wrote recently, ï¿½We will control the land of the Vatican; we will control Rome and introduce Islam in it.ï¿½ They already have a mosque there. Of course, before anyone writes to tell me, I am aware that Christianity has been just as much a conquering religion in its time.

The Spanish destroyed the ancient civilisations of Central and South America quite ruthlessly as they spread their message of Christian love. It was Christians too who colonised the Americas and Australia, annihilating the natives as they went. All the while, Christian missionaries were at work busy converting much of Africa. Now they have stopped their conquering and converting; indeed in much of the Christian world, in places like Quebec and France to name but two, they seem to have stopped believing in Christianity as well. If there are doubters still about things like freedom of religious belief then consider that the Saudi Arabian government bans all churches, while the west is building, if not paying for, so-called Islamic Cultural centres. Some of the funding for the UKï¿½s East London mosque came from such bodies as the European Development Fund, the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, Surestart (the UK Government's programme to deliver the best start in life for every child by bringing together: early education, childcare, health and family support), and the London Development Agency. In some Islamic countries even the preaching of Christianity is banned, contrasting starkly with the West where the right to practice religion is enshrined in our laws and constitutions.

Those 50,000 French converts to Islam, mentioned earlier, have all done so freely without reproach; any who convert to Christianity from Islam can expect death threats at the very least. Ask any of the Christian Pakistani refugees that Canada has sent back to their own country, if they are still alive that is. While the Crusades were, by and large, attempts to retrieve lands which were formerly Christian, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II, apologises for them almost constantly. Rather as an old lady might apologise to a mugger for trying to retrieve her purse, was the way the Archbishop of Canterbury described it. Contrast this with the statements of his opposite numbers which call loudly for the overthrow of Christendom. This is not to claim either that all conversion to Islam has been by the sword. Indonesia was peaceably converted by Muslim traders and is now the most populous of all the Islamic nations. But the conquests havenï¿½t stopped; Islam has continued spreading in sub-Saharan Africa most noticeably in Nigeria and Sudan. Heard from Darfur recently?

Even the most vociferous critics of the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions by President Bush are unlikely to believe that he did so in order to spread the word of Jesus. The supreme irony in this is that by deposing the hated Saddam Hussein, who ran the most secular of Arab regimes, the USA, publicly in favour of creating an Iraqi democracy, is actually transferring power to the imams. We read too of Christian churches in Iraq being attacked. Over the centuries, religions have changed because they needed to do so in order to survive. The Roman Catholic Church split into two when the Eastern Church broke away. Additional fragmentation occurred at the Reformation as numerous other sects came into being and today who knows how many Protestant sects there are? Even Judaism, the basis of both Christianity and Islam, has changed over the almost four thousand years of its existence and did so by making changes which allowed its devotees to live and survive in various cultures and countries. This does not seem to be true of Islam, where there appears to be no room for adaptation to the conditions of the 21st century, nor seemingly any incentive to do so. The laws of the 7th century were essentially designed for a nomadic people and have remained virtually unchanged ever since.

This is in part why modern concepts of freedom, human and womenï¿½s rights, equality and tolerance have not advanced in the Muslim world. Indeed there is conflict in many countries which have large Muslim populations and one only has to think about the Philippines and India to realise this. India, where Islamic invaders burned their way through the country periodically from the 8th century onwards, has endured sectarian violence for centuries, culminating in the creation of Pakistan. Mohammedï¿½s injunction to ï¿½Kill those who join other gods with God wherever you may find themï¿½ was enthusiastically followed in India, where not only Hindus but Buddhists ï¿½ a religion which has never fought a religious war ï¿½ were slaughtered and their women and children taken into slavery. The Hindus were fair game, not being ï¿½of the bookï¿½ as are Christians and Jews, although too numerous to eliminate completely. A Sharia regime grants the status of Dhimmitude to the Dhimmis (a protected people) allowing them to practice their religion.

They do so, but under a series of humiliating regulations designed to enforce the command of the Koran that non-Muslims shall ï¿½feel themselves subdued.ï¿½ This denial of equality of rights and dignity is part of the Sharia which the global Islamists would like to impose everywhere they go, ultimately the entire world. Recently an item in the press mentioned that Canadian judges could be enforcing Islamic law, or Sharia, soon in disputes between Muslims. Could this be the precursor of an Islamic penal law which will institute sentences such as the flogging or the stoning of adulterous women? What about other Muslim cultural features such as arranged marriages, divorce at will (by the husband of course), revenge killings, and female circumcision? Islam does not take kindly to music and dancing, gambling is forbidden and while not absolutely prohibited, drinking alcohol is discouraged. Will Canada become like the Malaysian state, controlled by an Islamist party, which says that any Muslim who converts to another faith has three days in which to repent, failing which he faces having his property forfeited and being sentenced to death? As one Dutch imam pointed out ï¿½The Sharia does not have to adapt to the modern world because these are divine laws.

People have to bend to the Sharia.ï¿½ What many of todayï¿½s politically correct ï¿½liberalsï¿½ and social engineers will think of as expressions of ï¿½toleranceï¿½ and ï¿½diversityï¿½, are perceived by Islamist radicals as simply more examples of decadent Western weakness. Judging from what is known of the internal structure of many Islamic communities living in Western countries, the notion that consent would always be genuine is quite implausible. Those Islamic radicals pushing for the introduction of Shariah into Western countries do not want to ï¿½live in peaceï¿½ with us, they seek the destruction of all that we understand and accept as Western values. Should they fail to convert us, as their writings show clearly, they would be prepared to accept our actual physical destruction.

The aforementioned Dr Al Qaradawi is also the spiritual guide of the hard-line Muslim Brotherhood, which is growing across Europe, and whose leader Muhammad Mahdi Othman ï¿½Akef declared recently, ï¿½I have complete faith that Islam will invade Europe and America, because Islam has logic and a mission.ï¿½ Can we be confident that he was not including Canada in his prediction? Can we be certain that our politicians understand that Islam is not simply a religion, but a way of life? Given the extremely short term views of Western politicians, whose concern for their countryï¿½s future rarely extends beyond the next election, the answer is likely to be more restrictions on the freedom of their own populations. We can expect also the continuing politically correct condemnation, using ï¿½hate speechï¿½ laws, of those who try to raise awareness of the problems likely to arise when intolerance is invited into a society in the name of tolerance and multiculturalism. Maybe Kipling was on to something after all. CURRENT ISSUE ï¿½ SUBSCRIBE TO QL ï¿½ WHO ARE WE?

ï¿½ SUBMISSION GUIDELINES ï¿½ REPRINT POLICY ï¿½ WRITE TO US ï¿½ 331 - East and West: Never the Twain Shall Meet? | Big Think 331 - East and West: Never the Twain Shall Meet? Over a year ago . If you’re American, geographically inclined and a bit of a stickler, this cartographic incongruity is a bit of an annoyance. From the US, the shortest route to what’s conventionally called ‘the East’ is in fact via the west. Going in that direction, you’ll hit the ‘Far East’ before you’re in the ‘Middle East’. And Europe, or at least that part usually included in ‘the West’, lies due east. So East is west, and West is east, in blatant contradiction of what’s probably Rudyard Kipling’s most famous line of verse: . Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet This opening line of The Ballad of East and West is often quoted to underline some insurmountable difference between the two hemispheres. It has almost invariably been misused.

Taken as a whole, the Ballad has a subtler message than the one implied in this single verse. It attributes the gap between the two cultures more to nurture than nature. The entire couplet (which also closes the poem) reads: Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border nor Breed nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth! The poem dates from 1889 and is set in the British Raj. At least here the context is pretty clear: Britain is the West, India the East. But definitions of ‘East’ and ‘West’ vary greatly throughout history – and remain fluid. To stick to the British perspective of the poem, where did (and where does) the East begin? The Berlin Wall? Istanbul? The Middle East? Persia? The Indus River? Or at the Greenwich Meridian, placing London in both the eastern and western hemispheres? As it turns out, a general definition for what is East and where West is, one that transcends place and time, is impossible to formulate.

This is because both terms are ambiguous to start with. The word West derives from an Proto-Indo-European root [*wes-] that signifies a downward movement, hence associated with the setting sun (cf. Latin vesper, from the same root and meaning both ‘evening’ and ‘West’). The Proto-Indo-European root for East is [*aus-], which has the opposite meaning, i.e. an upward movement (of the sun), dawn. As those etymologies suggest, East and West are but a matter of perspective. East is where the sun rises, West where it sets – as viewed from wherever you are. Which, incidentally, also means that it’s essentially impossible to be ‘in’ the East or West, as both aren’t fixed places, but shift with the horizon. Nevertheless, ‘East’ and ‘West’ have been embedded in our topographies ever since civilisations started naming the world around them. Take Europe for example. The name quite possibly derives from the Phoenician word ereb, meaning ‘setting’ (as in ‘setting sun’), as it lay to the west of Phoenicia (present-day Lebanon, more or less).

Similarly, the term Maghreb, used to describe the North African region at the western edge of the Arab world (i.e. Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia), is Arab for ‘sunset’ or ‘western’, as that is indeed their position from a peninsularly Arab point of view. Point of view is crucial, of course. East and West only exist in relation to someplace else. For many centuries, Europe was the vantage point from which the world was discovered, viewed and named. Columbus sailed west to arrive East in India, but instead stumbled on a new continent. It took a while for the confusion to lift, so the first name for America was the Indies, from 1555 on shifting to West Indies (when the mistake became increasingly apparent). About four decades later, the original Indies (i.e. India and South East Asia) started to be called the East Indies – to distinguish them more clearly from the West Indies. East and West were defined relative to Europe. Or more precisely Western Europe, for even eastern Germans and Balts were called easterlings by mediaeval (Western) chroniclers.

That East-West divide within Europe would harden from the beginning of the 20th century, with ‘the West’ used in a geopolitical sense from World War I, denoting the Allies (Britain, France, Italy) as opposed to Germany and Austria-Hungary (although they were known as the Central Powers, not the Eastern ones). ‘The West’, in opposition to the Soviet Union, was first used in 1918, ‘the East’ as in the Communist Eastern part of Europe was first recorded in 1951. During the Cold War, ‘the West’ was pretty clearly delineated, including all the NATO members (plus countries economically and culturally close to that alliance’s shared ideals, i.e. Sweden, Switzerland and Austria, but even Australia and New Zealand). ‘The East’, concurrently, consisted of the Warsaw Pact and affiliated Communist societies: China (“The East is Red”), North Korea, Vietnam. The fact that the Cold War is over, not to mention the continuously diminishing global impact of Europe, will continue to chip away at the still dominant eurocentric toponymy of the world.

In Australia, that ‘western outpost’ in the Pacific, ties with the ‘mother country’ (and Europe as a whole) have become so distant that Ozzies have begun referring to countries such as Indonesia, China and Japan not as the Far East, but as the Near North. Maybe the same will happen one day in the US, when Europe will no longer be the West but (with a nod to Don Rumsfeld and Europe’s pensioner boom) the Old East and East Asia perhaps will be the New West. Not forgetting that the Chinese have never thought of themselves as eastern or western but, of course, the Middle Kingdom… This map was sent in by Dennis J. Brennan, Sara Harrison, Kristin Kopf, and can be found here at the rather fantastic xkcd.com , “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language”, quoted before on this blog for its amusing map of online communities . MOST POPULAR East Is East and West Is West | KCET East Is East and West Is West D. J. Waldie D. J.

Waldie is the author of "Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir" and "Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles," among other books about the social history of Southern California. He is a contributing editor for the Los Angeles Times. 2013-02-08T06:00:00-08:00 East or West? | Photo: Imparo | Flickr: Creative Commons License "Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet" -Rudyard Kipling, The Ballad of East and West In Los Angeles at least, west and east do meet. If you're paying attention, you experience the meeting point as you turn an obtuse angle at Hoover Avenue and pass from the orthogonal American grid to the bent grid of Spanish colonial law. (Jeremy Rosenberg on these pages summarized the clash of empires embedded in asphalt. I've offered an explanation , too.) In Los Angeles, even the streets remember our differences.

Bent: Map of 'racial areas' of Los Angeles, 1938 | Map courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library Warren Olney, sounding a little skeptical of the notion, asked the other day if east and west in Los Angeles were in conflict in ways that matter. His guests on "Which Way LA?" -- some of the west, some of the east -- seemed to think that Olney wanted to know where you could find the best Korean barbeque or the cheapest loft spaces or the most obvious displays of plastic surgery. In a mostly lighthearted way, Olney's guests drew boundaries around what they considered authentic Los Angeles based on culture and class. Partisans of east and west who called KCRW's comment line did the same. A real distinction between east and west in Los Angeles has been a fixture of the city's landscape from the beginning. But does that distinction -- even though it persists -- shape what Los Angeles is becoming? Los Angeles was founded in September 1781 on the west bank of a river the Spanish authorities called the Rio Porciúncula.

The colonials established a plaza on a bluff overlooking the Porciúncula, consigning the Native American residents of Yang 'na to a "rancheria" below and to the east, at the southern end of what are now the train platforms of Union Station. Pin on Pinterest Share on LinkedIn Share on Google+ Through the 1850s -- following the American occupation of Los Angeles -- that original east/west division continued. The Sonoratown barrio crowded north and east of the old plaza. The newly American town -- actually just a few hundred yards away -- filled the higher ground west. A bigger and booming Los Angeles in 1890 was similarly divided. East of the plaza and extending to the river's edge was a mixed neighborhood of poor Russians, Jews, Chinese, and Latinos who will be uprooted in the mid-1930s to build Union Station. On Boyle Heights on the river's eastern bank, a largely Anglo community was being replaced by working-class Jews who will be replaced in turn by working-class Latinos. Westward rose the fashionable neighborhoods of Bunker Hill and Angelino Heights.

In early 20th century Los Angeles, west of the plaza was suburban, gracious, refined, and steadfastly white. East of the plaza, people of all colors promiscuously crowded together and all sorts of vice were available (a story that William David Estrada tells in The Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and Contested Space ). Displaced: Calvary Cemetary, 1880 | Photo courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library The distinction even applied to the city's dead. When the old cemetery in Sonoratown was abandoned in the 1920s, Catholic burials were shipped to a new cemetery east of the river and actually outside the city limits. Jewish, Serbian, and Chinese dead where similarly segregated. The 1950s and 1960s saw the building of the freeways, creating new physical and psychological barriers between west and east. Bunker Hill -- now an outpost of the east in terms of its ethnic and racial diversity -- was leveled to become an acropolis of office towers. Today, we know where the Westside begins -- somewhere around Beverly Hills. But where the east lies is much more fluid.

Some people locate the boundary in Hancock Park, which would have shocked the proper residents of that once exclusive neighborhood. Some locate the boundary in Echo Park or Silver Lake or Los Feliz. And truly anxious westsiders put the boundary at the 405 Freeway and never willingly travel further east than Farmer's Market. East of Hoover, east of the old plaza, east of the river are features in the landscape that resist revising by our cultural preferences even as we acknowledge (or scorn or mock or long for) the desirability of some other part of town we think serves what we want to become. We're all tourists of Los Angeles, someone remarked to Olney with approval, as if this city could survive as an exotic destination for people just passing through. East is east and west is west in Los Angeles, inescapably, but we're all east of the city that Los Angeles once was. The shape of the city to come is a common neighborhood in every way heterogeneous, mestizo, polyglot, impure, troubled, and worth loving. The Ballad of East and West The Sussex Edition Vol. 32, p. 231 The Burwash Edition Vol.

25 A Choice of Kipling�s Verse by T.S. Eliot The Works of Rudyard Kipling (Wordsworth Poetry Library) Other ballads tragic and light-hearted are in the �Other Verses� section of Barrack-Room Ballads; see also �The Dove of Dacca�. The Theme This is neatly encapsulated by Jan Montefiore (p. 75): ... Kipling�s justly famous �Ballad of East and West�, in which an English officer and an Afghan horse-thief Kamal discover friendship by respecting one another�s courage and chivalry. The ballad tells how, when Kamal the border thief steals a prize bay mare, the Colonel�s son (not named) follows them into enemy territory. When his own horse collapses from exhaustion the Colonel�s son, having lost a pistol to Kamal and being threatened with the prospect of making a meal for the jackals and crows, �lightly� responds by promising vengeance: ...Do good to bird and beast� But count who come for the broken meats before thou makest a feast� .

His jesting defiance wins the tribute: �May I eat dirt if thou hast hurt of me in deed or breath� from Kamal, and the Colonel�s son responds in kind: Take up the mare and keep her � by God she has carried a man. Kamal instead gives back the mare with the �lifter�s dower� of his own jewelled accoutrements, and when the Colonel�s son in return offers him the gift of his remaining pistol Kamal, not to be outdone in generosity, whistles up his �only son� to be the companion and fellow-soldier of the Englishman. The two young men return to 'Fort Bukloh� and: 'the boy who last night was �a Border-thief� is now �a man of the Guides.� Some critical opinions Charles Carrington writes of the year 1889 (p. xix.): At the end of the year a young man arrived in London with a sheaf of ballads to sell, and with two or three introductions to editors.

The December number of Macmillan�s Magazine contained one of his ballads which set the town on fire, with words which are not likely to be forgotten: Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God�s great Judgement Seat.. Eighteen-ninety was Rudyard Kipling�s year. There had been nothing like his sudden rise to fame and fortune since Byron awoke one morning to find that the publication of "Childe Harold" had made him famous. Carrington also notes (p. 104) that: 'this ballad is a romantic version of a tale that was in print long before Kipling�s day.' Of the opening he writes (p, 136:) No lines of Kipling�s have been more freely quoted, and more often misquoted in exactly the opposite sense which Kipling gave them. The first couplet is an echo from the Psalms where the figure of speech is used to express the universality of the divine law in spite of estranging seas; the second couplet is Kipling�s commentary, with the same theme as the psalmist.

The reference is to Psalm 103,12: 'Look how wide also the east is from the west: so far hath he set our sins from us. ' See also Psalm 75,7, and 107, 3. Carrington (p. 350) also sees the poem as reminiscent of Scott�s �Young Lochinvar. Of Barrack-Room Ballads he comments (p.196) : ... a collection of such richness, variety and gusto, if we claim no other merit for it, as to inflate the Kipling boom seven times larger ... it was reprinted three times in 1892, and fifty times in the next thirty years, much the most popular book of verse for more than a generation. Martin Fido notes (p. 62) that: This is Kipling�s first major triumph in London, despite its publication under a nom-de-plume.

Kingsley Amis (page 54) also discusses the misquotations, broadly agreeing with the above, and finally observing: All that is clear is that Kipling understood and honoured men of other races more deeply than any other English writer, as a reading of Kim will suggest. And Alfred Lord Tennyson, the aged Poet Laureate, quoted by Carrington (p.136), observed that: 'young Kipling was the only one of them with the divine fire'. See also �The Last of the Light Brigade�. J M S Tompkins (pp.77-78), with her usual perspicacity notes Kipling grumbling that the opening line: ... Is always quoted without the far-reaching exception that follows, but this may be his fault for putting the negative so emphatically. These are trifles as against the failure to recognise masterpieces but the habit is a bad one and has had more serious results. Therefore it seems to me that I ought to establish that most of Kipling�s work at all stages requires attentive reading. We ought to see clearly even what we reject.

See also KJ 056/02 and 122/16, and The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk, (Oxford University Press,1991). Notes on the text [line 5] Kamal is out He is raiding the border between Afghanistan and British India with an armed party and perhaps inviting others to join him as in �The Head of the District� , Life�s Handicap p. 127. [line 8] calkins Horseshoes. Reversing the horse-shoes to confuse pursuers was traditionally an old ruse of cattle-thieves on the English-Scottish border. [line 9] the Guides A celebrated regiment of the Indian Army under the British, with a reputation for initiative, endurance, and daring. They are now part of the elite Frontier Force Regiment of the Pakistan Army. [line 11] Ressaldar An Indian cavalry officer. (the spelling varies).

[line 12] pickets small parties of troops ahead of the main body to report sightings of the enemy [line 13] Abazai town in Charsadda District, North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan [line 14] Fort Bukloh Identified by Charles Carrington in a letter to the Kipling Journal, (KJ 126/25) : Just back from Pakistan. The scene of "The Ballad of East and West" is quite clearly the plain between Jumrood ('Fort Bukloh') and the mouth of the Khyber Pass ('tongue of Jagai'). Every verbal image in the ballad corresponds with what you can see, hear and smell on the spot. The first village up the pass is actually called 'Shagai'. South of Mardan, Shagai is a region in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. A fort built by the British to oversee the Khyber Pass and house the Khyber Rifles still stands, and is today used by the Pakistan Army. [line 16] Tongue of Jagai see �The Head of the District�, Life�s Handicap, p. 120, line 19.

[line 20] breech-bolt part of the mechanism of a rifle that makes a characteristic noise when operated. [line 21] dun A brownish mouse-coloured horse. [line 22] the mouth of a bell hard-mouthed and so difficult to control. gallows-tree the framework on which criminals are hanged, and so an ugly-looking creature. [line 28] the white of her eye an echo of the order attributed to William Prescott at the battle of Bunker Hill in 1775: 'don�t one of you fire until you see the whites of their eyes'.. [line 29] ball the missile fired by a firearm. [line 31] dust-devils small whirlwinds of dust or debris, most frequent in arid regions. [line 32] a stag of ten A fine male deer, with impressive antlers. More specifically, a stag with ten tines or points on his antlers, five on each side. barren doe a female deer that has not bred. [line 34] snaffle-bars parts of the bit used in the mouth to control the horse. [line 38] fawn a young deer.

[line 40] red a chestnut or bright bay horse or mare. [line 44] cocked ready to fire. [line 46] jackals Small wild dogs. Usually hunting in packs, they are scavengers of carrion but will also eat small animals. Tabaqui, the jackal, figures in The Jungle Book, and is a despicable creature. [line 48] kite a bird of prey of the family Accipitridae which includes hawks and eagles, A kite named Chil�sometimes called Rann�figures in The Jungle Book. [line 50] broken meats fragments of food remaining after a meal. [line 67] a lifter�s dower a 'lifter' in this context is a cattle-stealer, a 'dower' (or dowry) is the money that is given with a bride to her husband. turquoise an opaque blue-green stone, much prized as jewellery. [line 68] �broidered embroidered. [line 79] White Queen Queen Victoria (1819-1901) Empress of India. [line 81] trooper a cavalryman, the equivalent of a private soldier in the infantry.

[line 82] Peshawur Capital of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, 11 miles (18 km ) east of the Khyber Pass, which provides the easiest route between the Indian subcontinent and Afghanistan. [line 84] Oath of the Brother-in-Blood men who have sworn to treat each other as brothers partake in a ceremony in which their blood is mingled. [line 85] fire and new-cut sod Part of the ceremony. Further information will be appreciated. [line 86] Khyber knife a long Indian knife with a triangular, single-edged blade and the handle set off centre . See �With the Main Guard� in Soldiers Three p. 61 onwards. [line 86] the Wondrous Names of God 'He is Allah, The Creator, The Originator, The Fashioner, To Him belong the most Beautiful Names.

Whatever is in the Heavens and on Earth, Do Declare His Praises and Glory, And He is the Exalted in Might, The Wise.' [Qur�an 59:24] [line 89] the Quarter-Guard the main point of security in an Indian Army camp or garrison, providing an armed party�day and night�ready for instant action in emergency. The regimental colours, the armoury and the treasury would be kept in this building. together with a lock-up to hold soldiers charged with minor crimes like absence without leave, drunkenness etc. The Guard usually consisted of the guard commander (a Naik or Havildar) a second-in-command, six guards and perhaps a bugler. The guard turned out for inspection by visiting dignitaries, as Kipling recalled in Something of Myself (pp. 55/56) I am, by the way, one of the few civilians who have turned out a Quarter-Guard of Her Majesty's troops. It was on a chill winter morn, about 2 A.M.

at the Fort, and though I suppose I had been given the countersign on my departure from the Mess, I forgot it ere I reached the Main Guard, and when challenged announced mysel. spaciously as `Visiting Rounds.' When the men had clattered out I asked the Sergeant if he had ever seen a finer collection of scoundrels. That cost me beer by the gallon, but it was worth it. See also �With the Main Guard� in Soldiers Three, page 55, line 9. [line 90] feud a quarrel in which the members of hostile families or tribes murder each other, often carried on for generations. [lines 93-94] Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat; David Gilmour writes (p. 89): 'The charge of racism is commonly accompanied by the quotation of these lines ... which imply that the peoples on opposite sides of the globe are so different that they will never understand each other until the Day of Judgement...

Yet the apparent message of these lines is contradicted by the rest of the verse which asserts that two men of equal courage and ability can be equals despite multitudinous differences of class, race, nation and continent. [D.G.] But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face though they come from the ends of the earth! [J McG.] 'Never the twain shall meet' - the meaning and origin of this phrase Famous Last Words Browse phrases beginning with: Never the twain shall meet Meaning Two things which are so different as to have no opportunity to unite. Origin Twain derives from the Old English twegen, meaning two. The phrase never the twain shall meet was used by Rudyard Kipling, in his Barrack-room ballads, 1892: "Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." There, Kipling is lamenting the gulf of understanding between the British and the inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent. It may well be that he coined the phrase - at least, I can't find an earlier citation of it in print.

Question: Who wrote the line East is East and West is West?
Answer: Rudyard Kipling